Efforts have been made to provide personal cooling devices that can be worn by a user to provide a cooling effect during hot weather. However, prior art personal cooling devices suffer from a combination of the following drawbacks: (1) short duration of cooling effect; (2) lack of portability; (3) lack of ability to keep coolant in a targeted area; (4) high cost of manufacture; (5) lack of a means for convenient storage when not in use; (6) lack of means for advertising media; (7) lack of hygienically acceptable means of public re-use or recycling; (8) requires access to a cooling media that may not be stored practically or that is not ready available under some conditions (e.g. ice in remote locations).
Baseball-type caps are the most ubiquitous form of hat presently being worn in the United States. Most baseball hats have an opening in the rear of the hat, with a strap spanning the opening along the rim of the hat. In most cases the strap is adjustable, such that the size of the rim of the hat can be adjusted to fit various head sizes.
Various efforts have been made to provide neck shields that extend downward from the rear of a hat or helmet. See U.S. Pat. No. 6,233,745 (Friesen); U.S. Pat. No. 6,163,886 (Carter); U.S. Pat. No. 5,493,734 (Nieves-Rivera); U.S. Pat. No. 5,201,077 (Dondlinger).
U.S. Pat. No. 6,021,525 (Mertins) discloses a neck shield that hangs downward from the rear strap of a cap. The neck shield includes a securement loop portion for securing the attachment to the adjustment strap of the cap. A connector portion has first and second ends and diverging side edges between the first and second ends, the first end being secured to the securement loop forming portion. A deployable neck shield portion is connected to the second end of the connector portion. The connector portion is shaped such that when stowed inside the cap, the connector portion fills the hemispheric opening. When deployed, the connector portion positions the demployable neck shield in position to protect the user's neck from sun rays. The inside surface of the connector portion can carry decorative surface ornamentation, such as a team logo. When in a stowed position, the decorative surface ornamentation is presented for viewing. Mertins makes no mention of using ice or coolant packs in conjunction with the neck shield or cap.
Efforts have been made to provide caps that include some form of cooling function. U.S. Pat. Des. No. 358,474 discloses a cap that has what appears to be an ice compartment on the rear region of the cap. The compartment is located above the rim of the hat, and is apparently not removable. U.S. Pat. No. 5,327,585 (Karlan) discloses an elongated, semi-flat tubular body that may be removably supported within the channel defined by the sweat band of a hat or cap for use in absorbing heat from the adjacent head areas of the wearer of the hat or to provide heat to those, adjacent head areas. The elongated, semi-flat tubular body is constructed of flexible fluid impervious material and is divided into separate longitudinally spaced compartments along longitudinally spaced flexible transverse zones of the body. The compartments are filled with a fluid eutectic solution. The body may be folded along the transverse zones for relative angular displacement of the adjacent compartments.
As far as the inventor can determine, U.S. Pat. No. 6,185,750 (Dumas) is the only prior effort to use the rear strap of a cap as a means of supporting a cooling device. The cooling device of Dumas comprises a narrow pouch configured to fit around the neck of a user. The pouch has an interior portion and a fastening means that securely fits the device around the user's neck. The cooling device has a cap attachment means that allows the cooling device to be secured to the user's cap. The pouch is filled with ice, which cools the air around the user.
As far as the inventor has been able to determine, no efforts have been made to combine neck shields with coolant technology in order to provide a personal cooling device. There is thus a need for an invention having the following characteristics and advantages over the prior art.